Navigation

Monday, June 28, 2010

Play It! Pure and Simple #1 Mega Man Legends

Games to get out and play! New and old.

Mega Man Legends... oh how we hardly knew ye...

I should start off with some kind of disclaimer here. Mega Man Legends 1 & 2 are old games. That's right, Playstation ONE old. So given, you're going to be going back to an old era to play these. Take that with a grain of salt. You can't compare them to something out now because it just isn't fair. It's like comparing the original Mario to Super Mario Galaxy or even worse, comparing Mario to Metal Gear Solid 4, which would just be silly to begin with. Apples to Oranges and Apples to Piles of Gold and all that.

There is good news about it being a Playstation One game: you can get it for cheap. There are people trying to sell it for the same price as a new game but there are many willing to sell it for five bucks or less and if you're lucky enough to find it in a local game store, it will be dirt cheap. Other good news: They are trying to get this series on PSOne Classics for the Playstation Network so that's great news for all PS3 owners. Be looking out for that. And there is word for a Wii Virtual Console download to hopefully be coming up since it was ported over to the N64 back in the day.

Almost everyone has heard of Mega Man but not many know of Mega Man Legends. While normally Mega Man games are of the Platform genre, Legends is a roleplaying adventure game. Think Legend of Zelda-esque here. You have a massively expansive 3D world (that's right, first Mega Man game in 3D) and the main character isn't even the Mega Man we all know. Think of this as being set in an alternate universe basically. The Roll for this series is also a different Roll. No other names return though. It's an all new cast and all new story. The fact that the story is more complex than just "Go beat 8 robot masters and Dr. Wily" is already a huge plus. The fact that Dr. Wily doesn't even exist in this storyline is also a huge plus. Sorry Dr. Light, that means you don't exist here either.

The main character isn't even a robot and he is only named Mega Man because it's Roll's favorite video game character. Mega Man Volnutt and his buddy Data were found during a dig by Barrell Caskett (Roll Caskett's grandfather so yeah, together they are Barrell Roll... gotta luv it... though I don't quite get the double l's). Dig's are the term for excavations in ruins. Brave individuals go about this task because of a very important fact about the world: THE EARTH IS FLOODED! Shit went down ages ago that caused the Earth to be flooded and only small islands exist throughout the world. A new energy source is used, known as Refractors. Diggers go in search of these for the obvious reason of how valuable they are to life as we know it. You start the game off as Mega Man Volunutt, the digger, many years after being adopted and raised by Barrell. You're already in a dig site at the beginning which is basically the tutorial level.

You have a pretty spiffy suit that is equipped with different adjustable weapons for each arm. Your left arm weapon is your main buster arm while your right is your special weapon arm. The left arm has different adjustments like firing rate, range, damage, and energy (ammo capacity basically). These are adjusted by acquiring different buster parts that you can plug into slots with different combinations much like the Materia system from Final Fantasy 7. Your special weapons are created by finding different parts that Roll will be able to combine (she's your mechanic) into a single weapon. So you can play around with different weapons for different jobs. You can also upgrade different stats and even upgrade your armor and more. Getting the hoverskate shoes later on is a blast.

There is tons of different mission types such as dungeon exploration, investigation, protecting the city, puzzles, and your typical fetch quests, fights, and boss battles that you would expect. Different parts of town that you can access after getting different licenses also reveal more side quests and mini-games.

After you get through the first dungeon, you are back on your airship the Flutter. How else do you expect them to get from island to island? Airships are the way to go. Shit goes down though and you are forced to crash land on Kattelox Island. Pirates show up known as the Bonnes and you decide to stop their efforts. You're such a nice guy. Look at you. So they get pissed and become recurring villains.

They're also the comic relief so learn to love them. There are other interesting characters introduced later and especially in Mega Man Legends 2 but you'll just have to play to find out.

If you like the idea of a Legend of Zelda game starring Mega Man so you can shoot and blow up things then go find this. Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man and creator of the Legends series still finds this to be his favorite series and consistently tells the press that he wants to make a third. A Mega Man game with a more complex and mysterious story, roleplaying elements, and exploration? Yeah, it probably is the best Mega Man game. I haven't managed to play this game in quite awhile so I can't say if it has stood the test of time but not many games do so we'll see if I can find another copy since mine is lost.

It's pretty obvious that they want to raise interest in the series as this particular Mega Man has appeared in Namco X Capcom and Tatsunoko VS Capcom: Ultimate All Stars as well as cameos in Dead Rising (you can find the Servbot helmet and the mega man volnutt buster arm). So hopefully the PS3: PSOne Classics and Wii Virtual Console plans will work out. Let's hope that all comes together to make it even easier and cheaper to get this game. It may not be as great NOW but it's definitely worth looking into.

To answer your question Chris... unless it was 100% rhetorical: There were a couple of awkward games like NT warrior and what not. I don't care for those myself. Do you like those Chris? And why aren't you following? :P